If your assets are stock, you pay in the form of tax on capital gains.
Only if I sell them. If I have a trillion dollars in stocks (say, all of Microsoft, all of GE, enough GM to make up an even trillion), never sold a single share, and worked as a greeter at Walmart to pay the bills, I'd pay no taxes (actually, I'm unsure just how much a greeter at Walmart gets paid - it's possible I'd make enough to pay a small amount of taxes) on my income, and have no capital gains.
Get out off suburbia for a change, a lot of people live like Medieval peasants at the moment. A lot more are even worse off.
You think that's a GOOD thing?
I think that's irrelevant to the question of whether you think that "poverty" would be solved by making sure we ALL lived like medieval peasants?
However, if the choice is (a) a lot of people live like medieval peasants, or (b) we ALL live like medieval peasants, then I vote for (a).
Yes, I know. That's a false dichotomy. However, your definition of poverty makes (b) better than (a). Which, frankly, appalls me.
How about, as a alternative, we raise everyone's standard of living by a factor of 1000. That would leave everyone in the world with a higher standard of living than anyone short of the excruciatingly wealthy today. But we can't have that, of course, since it wouldn't actually change the poverty rate (using your definition) at all, would it?
As a point of reference, the assets of General Electric, the fourth largest American corporation, equaled $4,851,718,000 in 1966. Yes. That's four trillion.
ummm. that number you wrote up there is actually four BILLION, not four trillion. You need three more digits to get into the trillions. And Bill Gates is worth between $35,000,000,000 and $100,000,000,000 depending on the current price of MS stock (which I neither know nor care to know the exact value of). Note that 35 followed by nine zeroes is bigger than 4 followed by 851,718,000.
Note also that GE today is worth less than $400 BILLION. Are you seriously suggesting that they lost 90% of their wealth in the last 40 years?
The fellow I chose to illustrate this with, aside from being a trillionaire in the 60's
Is this some new use of the word "trillionaire", of which I have not previously been aware?
HL Hunt was worth between 400 and 700 million in 57, and between 3 and 5 billion in 74. So you're saying his wealth increased by a factor of 2000, then decreased by a factor of 200 in those 17 years? I think not.
We have to look at that tax, and all taxes in terms of their total effect, rather than simple cost. Social Security came about for one reason. People got old and realised they couldn't afford to live after retirement.
Umm, no. Social Security came about because FDR wanted to pump some money into the economy to escape the Great Depression. Had nothing to do with retirement (read the literature of the USA pre-Depression - retirement wasn't much talked about except among the wealthy), though keeping older Americans from starving during the Depression was a factor in the decision to implement SS.
Note also that Social Security was described in terms of "you pay in now, you get money back later" (an insurance scheme) because, at the time it began, it was seen as shameful to have to take handouts from the government. My, how times have changed.
Show me proof that nudity, or even showing sex to children, somehow scars them for life.
Show me proof that nude children, or even having sex with children, somehow scars them for life?
The national argument isn't "should there be censorship or not?", it's "Where should we draw the line?" You think it should be in a different place than some other people do. I sincerely hope you're not the kind of idiot who thinks that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot or a villain. Wait, this is/. Never mind.
Or am I mistaken, and you DO approve of kiddie-porn?
why do you say that a flat tax is an inherently bad idea? I don't know that I've heard arguments to that effect before.
It's an inherently bad idea because the very rich paying the same percentage as you and I do would cause millions of imbeciles to scream bloody murder that "they're not paying their fair share!!!!". This is an undesirable outcome in any tax scheme, since taxes only work if the overwhelming majority of the taxpayers see the scheme as "fair". Note that it doesn't actually have to BE "fair", but it must be seen as such.
By the same token, even the vast majority of the poor have a problem with things like 92% tax rates on the rich (that's the top rate that was in effect in the USA when Kennedy took office, by the by - oddly enough, when he convinced Congress to lower that rate, the Democrats didn't scream about "tax breaks for the rich!!!" Perhaps because he was a Democrat...). So they'll be willing to lower that rate somewhat. Note that the people paying that top rate are few in number, and usually have good enough tax lawyers that they don't actually pay that much - again, the issue isn't "is it fair?", the issue is "does it seem fair?".
Mildly progressive taxes (like we have now, both before Clinton raised taxes on the rich, after Clinton raised taxes on the rich, and after Bush lowered taxes on the rich) are enough to keep the vast majority of the taxpayers thinking that "it's fair", without being onerous enough that it stifles growth.
Note also that local culture has a big effect on this. Exactly how much you can tax the rich|poor|middle-class depends on how the people in general feel about taxation (during WW2 we didn't have a problem with a 92% top tax rate - a generation later we did). Europeans seem to be willing to live with higher tax levels than we are over here, for instance. This is not to imply that we are better than they are, or worse than they are, just different. A couple of generations of the right sort of public education (which includes what people see on TV, not just what they study in school) could make us like them, them like us, or both of us farther to either extreme than we are now.
Sure, the king lives in luxury while the serf toils all day in the fields and dies at a relatively young age... but if the king didn't rule over him, his life COULD be even worse.
And looking at history, we see that in the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Feudal period, the peasants' lives were, in fact...worse. Much worse. That was when barbarian (by Roman standards, anyway) armies were pillaging their way across the provinces of the Empire. Later on, those armies became the new overlords and protected (at least theoretically, and mostly practically) the peasants.
Please note that Feudalism was a reaction to the extreme poverty of the period and the weakness and poverty even of the kings - the whole feudal structure consisted of people who owed various obligations to their overlords in lieu of, well, taxes - "you bring 100 men to fight for me when I call, and I'll let you rule the land between this river and the next"....
Am I the only noticing that 1% of the top earners own 40% of the wealth (as in one of the 5-rated comments) and 1% of the top tax payers pay only 30% of all taxes is kind of strange and suspicious?
Does that mean that 1% of the richest are not quite the same as 1% of the top tax payers? What happened to the progressive tax system?
It means exactly that. We tax based on INCOME, not WEALTH. If I have one TRILLION dollars in assets, but an income of only fifteen thousand a year, I pay no taxes. And that trillion is pretty much meaningless.
So Bill Gates doesn't pay taxes based on what his Microsoft stock is worth, but rather on what Microsoft pays him (plus what he gets for selling any stock over and above what Microsoft pays him). In his case, wealth and income are totally disjoint.
Once upon a time, the last time but a few (dozen) that we had a discussion that got around to taxes, I went to the IRS website to get their tax statistics. The "rich" (in terms of income, NOT wealth) pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes than the rest of us do. Not an astoundingly higher percentage, but higher. Which is as it should be - a flat tax is an inherently bad idea, just as an extremely progressive tax is a bad idea.
If you have a mortgage, then chances are as an American you have no net assets. I do very, very, well for myself, but I'm in net debt. I don't carry any credit card balances, but my car loan and mortgage alone wipe out my net worth.
Which would put you in that "bottom 50% that owns 1% of the world's wealth, correct?
So, do you go hungry often? Have you had to sell any of your children to buy food for the others? Sleep under the stars because you have no home? Wear rags until they rot off your body?
Somehow, I think not. You've got the laptop, the cellphone, cable TV, VCR/DVR, probably several TV's, the car (or more than one), the lawnmower, edger, weedwhacker, beds, comfortable furniture, plenty of clothes, plenty of food at home (unless tomorrow is grocery day, then maybe not), money to go see a movie when you want to, to eat in a nice restaurant from time to time, etc.
In other words, wealth, as defined in this study, is a pretty meaningless way to decide how well off you are.
(we might be able to trust those in the EU because it would be suicide for them economically to do anything like cutting us off, but even then don't put all your eggs in one basket
Before World War One, it was believed that a large European war was basically impossible, because it would destroy the economies of the countries involved.
n The Netherlands we have a system where all schools are getting per pupil a comparable amount of money from the national government.
But parents, churges etc. are allowed to set up a school (and school board) themselves, as a result a lot of schools are not 'public' yet are still paid for by society as a whole.
All schools have to comply with minimum requirements re. the levels of education but if the parents (through the board) would for example give the schooling a catholic or muslim slant that is fine. When parents want to make extra financial or other contributions that's also possible.
Only from the left we hear complaints that the 'real' public schools get the burden of receiving the majority of problematic pupils.
A strange argument as the schools with a private board generally cannot refuse entry to any pupil.
Sounds like you effectively have what we refer to as "vouchers" - the tax money follows the kid, not the school, and the school can be whatever the parent(s) want it to be, so long as it meets educational minimum requirements.
Clinton was having a consensual affair with Lewinsky. Unless Clinton turned around and started sexually harassing Lewinsky too, Lewinsky was entirely irrelevent to the picture, and that question should absolutely, never, have been asked.
Interestingly, a few days after the lawsuit that started was dismissed by the Judge, the Supremes came down with a decision that said that even consensual affairs between employer and employee had some element of coercion, and therefore were liable to be considered harassment if either party was of a mind to do so. This in response to a sexual completely unrelated harassment suit as a result of a consensual affair that apparently went south.
because of relativity we probably can't hope for better than ~.001c as maximum speed.
I fail to see how relativity limits us to 0.001c. The relativistic effects of such a speed differ from classical mechanics by only 0.00005 percent. So a trip of 5.4 light hours at 0.001c would take 5400 hours, but would appear to the passengers to take nearly TEN SECONDS less time 5399 hours, 59 minutes, 50.2 seconds
To reach.001c with 50g's would take.003e8 m/s / (5 * 9.8m/s^2) ) ~= 8 hours (neglecting relativistic effects, real time would be longer... lets say we can increase the force arbitrarily to compensate for relativity, again more new physics needed). So we need 16 hours to reach that speed, and another 16 hours to decelerate at the other side, means 16 hours accelerating and decelerating, and I'm neglecting more relativity here, but again on the aggressive side.
Actually, the number you are looking for is 1.7 hours, not eight hours (or 16). And it is nearly irrelevant. If you are travelling 5.4 light hours at 0.001c, it would take you 5400 hours. If you accelerate at 5g to get to 0.001c, we can increase travel time to 5401.7 hours. At 1g, the actual travel time would be about 5408.5 hours. Trust me, after better than seven months in space, the extra 6.8 hours would be meaningless. Even at 0.1g, travel time would only increase by about three and a half days (85 extra hours), again trivial compared to seven months in space.
My next point is often neglected. What happens if you hit a little meteorite (It could be the size of a pebble, or even just a little cloud of dust). If that smacks into you at.001c relative velocity, you can bet it's going to do a lot of damage, even without considering relativistic mass. Think about how much damage small meteors do impacting earth at terminal velocity, which is probably at.00001 c or something... So we need shielding technology. Think about how much trouble the shuttle has with it's shielding tiles.
No, it's not.
0.001c is about 300km/s. It's fast. Really fast. a 1 gram rock at that speed would have almost the kinetic energy of a tank's APFSDSDU round. Well, okay, about 1/6th that energy. Non-trivial, but it's not a "blow the spacecraft up" sort of event.
Again, relativity is not important at such low speeds as 0.001c.
Oh, and the shuttle's shielding tiles are about reentry heat, not about protecting it from meteors or other weaponry - the tiles are about as tough as so much glass.
And 0.00001c for meteors? I'm afraid you're off by a factor of ten there - try 0.0001c. The Shuttle reenters at almost three times the speed you ascribe to meteors, and it's going about as slowly as it's possible to go at reentry.
The upshot is we are a LONG LONG way away from travelling to pluto or even mars in short times. More importantly there are many other technological hurdles that have to be overcome before we get to that point. The space program has been responsible for a lot of useful technology that has made it into the civilian world (tempura and velco spring immediately to mind, but I know there are many more).
Actually, the slowest POSSIBLE free orbit to Mars is quicker than your hypothetical trip to Pluto at 0.001c - it's a big solar system, but Mars isn't really all that far away.
By the by, Velcro came along before the space program. And tempura???? What does the space program have to do with Japanese fried foods? I can't even begin to guess what you thought you were talking about with that one.
As for the honesty issue, that's why the survey asked the households to show death certificates for the deaths that they reported. The vast majority of them showed them.
Umm, you do realize that 600,000 dead out of 26,000,000 implies that the 1849 people sampled turned up about 43 death certificates, right? Assuming that they did, in fact, use Death Certificates as the indicator.
Far be it from me to think that 42 death certificates are not a solid statistical sample, of course.
But all the news reports and government press annoucements are reporting fatalities when normally they report casualties. So yes, if you notice that they are now reporting a different number than normal, you can go out and find it. Many people, who as another noted are probably not aware of the difference between casualty and fatality, would not do this and accept the official account.
Actually, historically, we're reported both casualties and deaths, but concentrated on deaths. During WW2, it was routine to list local soldiers who'd lost lives in the newspapers. Routine wounds were seldom reported, though they would be, when available, for major battles. Note that they were seldom available for months afterwards.
Note, further, that in 10 years of Vietnam, we had 58,184 killed. In Korea, three years, 36,913. In WW2, during the three years and change, we had 405,399 killed. WW1, two years and change, 116,516. Civil War, four years and change, 364,511 (not counting Southerners).
It is certainly arguable whether Iraq is comparable to the Civil War, WW1, or WW2. Hard to argue it's not commparable to Korea, which is of similar size, and had an inferior military in every way (smaller, using weapons obsolete even then, poorly equipped even in the obsolete equipment it had).
So, yes, we have suffered a comparatively paltry number of casualties. Does this justify the casualties we HAVE suffered? No. Whatever justification for casualties are possible in ANY war are best framed in terms of "What did we gain at the price of those deaths?" Note that I think that the Civil War, WW1, and WW2 were worth the price we paid. Vietnam was not worth the price, probably (its results were arguable, at best). Korea was only worthwhile because it established the notion that the UN was NOT the League of Nations. Which probably bought us two generations without a major war.
Since the Egyptian Kings were considered gods, they were given the best of everything. Why not make their final resting place of the best materials using the best construction methods?
You haven't read much Egyptian history, I see.
Some Pyramids were cannibalized to finish up others, when they were needed suddenly (by an untimely death). Some Pharoahs (Tutankhamon, for instance) were buried in whatever tomb happened to be ready when he died.
The Egyptian Pharoahs were Gods, alright. But mostly the dead ones were treated as dead, and the live ones got to decide what was important - and with few exceptions, they didn't think their own tombs were nearly so important as the stuff they were using while they were still alive. Much less the tombs of that last guy, whatsisname....
* Maybe fourth, if you're going by the % of seats available
I'll go with third.
and two of those are unarguably historic events (the midterm surrounding Watergate and the Republican Revolution of 1994)
Can't argue with that. The million dollar question is whether this one was a "historic event", or just a large swing back to "normal" - the Democrats controlled the House for so long before 1994 that many people regard that as the normal state of affairs (including me - until 1994, the Dems had controlled the House for my entire life).
Looking at the historic data, you see much bigger shifts in the elections before 1974 than in the elections after. Average before: 30. Average after: 18. Which indicates that the incumbency effect has been getting stronger lately. Throw in gerrymandering, and it's obvious that this election was well outside the norm.
Don't treat gerrymandering as a new phenomenon. It's been around since the beginning of the United States. So, that particular factor should be ignored. Remember that while the gerrymandering by Republicans has made the news a lot in the last decade, it has been used by the Democrats in places that they controlled as well. And was practiced by both Parties before the subject of Republican gerrymandering became an issue.
The Incumbent Effect is certainly real - most seats that change hands are open these days. Largely the effect of the unintended consequences of Campaign Reform laws since Watergate.
Yah, we need some campaign reform. However, what we've gotten in the way of Campaign Reform has been a dismal failure at its stated intent (though no doubt a success at its unstated intent - to make sure the lawmakers who passed it succeeded at reelection).
No, Term Limits aren't the answer - we don't need to transfer more power to the Civil Service or the Lobbyists - both have too much already.
Personally, I'd prefer that the States and Feds get out of the business of supporting political parties. No more Party primaries run by the State - let the Parties manage (and pay for) their own Primaries if they want them. No Party affiliation listed on ballots, even. The States should neither know nor care what Party a candidate is a member of, nor should some Parties have privileged positions relative to other Parties.
Hell, even the Greens might have a chance that way, if the Republicans and Democrats end up running more than one candidate each because the egos of the candidates can't step aside and make room for the bigger egos of the other candidates from their own Parties.
Did you notice the total change of power in a non-presidential election year?
Hmm, didn't that happen as recently as 1994?
I've never bothered to do much research on the average loss of seats by the Party in power during a midterm election, but it's pretty much normal for the ruling Party to lose some seats at every midterm election. The Dems picked up 32 seats, I think. Which puts them on the high side of average for a midterm election, but not incredibly so - average is somewhere in the mid-20's, I think.
Plenty of evidence the change is because of disgust with the Republicans, very little that civil rights had much to do with it.
Bastogne (December 1944). Defended by the 101st Airborne (light infantry, basically) and part of the 10th Armor (sherman tanks & related troopies) against 15 German divisions using tanks better than anything the USA put into the field at the time, plus nearly unlimited supplies. Note that the American troops were moved from their rest areas to Bastogne without most of their weapons, and with very limited ammunition (shortly before the Third Army broke through, the artillery in Bastogne was down to three rounds per tube).
That's the best example I can think of where we were both outnumbered and out-technologied. Note that even with the Third Army relief forces included in the American count, the Americans were outnumbered by more than two to one. The Americans did not field a tank as good as the Panther until the Korean War, as I recall, though arguably the Pershing (1945) was almost good enough.
Up here you're not registered with any political party.
Down here, you're only registered with a political party if you want to be, and such registration only allows you to vote in the Party Primaries. It has ZERO impact on how you vote in the general election (the Old South is full of registered Democrats who vote Republican).
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The old fashioned way - I inherited it.
If your assets are stock, you pay in the form of tax on capital gains.
Only if I sell them. If I have a trillion dollars in stocks (say, all of Microsoft, all of GE, enough GM to make up an even trillion), never sold a single share, and worked as a greeter at Walmart to pay the bills, I'd pay no taxes (actually, I'm unsure just how much a greeter at Walmart gets paid - it's possible I'd make enough to pay a small amount of taxes) on my income, and have no capital gains.
You think that's a GOOD thing?
I think that's irrelevant to the question of whether you think that "poverty" would be solved by making sure we ALL lived like medieval peasants?
However, if the choice is (a) a lot of people live like medieval peasants, or (b) we ALL live like medieval peasants, then I vote for (a).
Yes, I know. That's a false dichotomy. However, your definition of poverty makes (b) better than (a). Which, frankly, appalls me.
How about, as a alternative, we raise everyone's standard of living by a factor of 1000. That would leave everyone in the world with a higher standard of living than anyone short of the excruciatingly wealthy today. But we can't have that, of course, since it wouldn't actually change the poverty rate (using your definition) at all, would it?
ummm. that number you wrote up there is actually four BILLION, not four trillion. You need three more digits to get into the trillions. And Bill Gates is worth between $35,000,000,000 and $100,000,000,000 depending on the current price of MS stock (which I neither know nor care to know the exact value of). Note that 35 followed by nine zeroes is bigger than 4 followed by 851,718,000.
Note also that GE today is worth less than $400 BILLION. Are you seriously suggesting that they lost 90% of their wealth in the last 40 years?
Is this some new use of the word "trillionaire", of which I have not previously been aware?
HL Hunt was worth between 400 and 700 million in 57, and between 3 and 5 billion in 74. So you're saying his wealth increased by a factor of 2000, then decreased by a factor of 200 in those 17 years? I think not.
Perhaps you meant "billionaire"?
So, if everyone in the world lived like Medieval peasants, we'd have no poverty?
And you think this would be a GOOD thing?
Umm, no. Social Security came about because FDR wanted to pump some money into the economy to escape the Great Depression. Had nothing to do with retirement (read the literature of the USA pre-Depression - retirement wasn't much talked about except among the wealthy), though keeping older Americans from starving during the Depression was a factor in the decision to implement SS.
Note also that Social Security was described in terms of "you pay in now, you get money back later" (an insurance scheme) because, at the time it began, it was seen as shameful to have to take handouts from the government. My, how times have changed.
Show me proof that nude children, or even having sex with children, somehow scars them for life?
The national argument isn't "should there be censorship or not?", it's "Where should we draw the line?" You think it should be in a different place than some other people do. I sincerely hope you're not the kind of idiot who thinks that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot or a villain. Wait, this is /. Never mind.
Or am I mistaken, and you DO approve of kiddie-porn?
It's an inherently bad idea because the very rich paying the same percentage as you and I do would cause millions of imbeciles to scream bloody murder that "they're not paying their fair share!!!!". This is an undesirable outcome in any tax scheme, since taxes only work if the overwhelming majority of the taxpayers see the scheme as "fair". Note that it doesn't actually have to BE "fair", but it must be seen as such.
By the same token, even the vast majority of the poor have a problem with things like 92% tax rates on the rich (that's the top rate that was in effect in the USA when Kennedy took office, by the by - oddly enough, when he convinced Congress to lower that rate, the Democrats didn't scream about "tax breaks for the rich!!!" Perhaps because he was a Democrat...). So they'll be willing to lower that rate somewhat. Note that the people paying that top rate are few in number, and usually have good enough tax lawyers that they don't actually pay that much - again, the issue isn't "is it fair?", the issue is "does it seem fair?".
Mildly progressive taxes (like we have now, both before Clinton raised taxes on the rich, after Clinton raised taxes on the rich, and after Bush lowered taxes on the rich) are enough to keep the vast majority of the taxpayers thinking that "it's fair", without being onerous enough that it stifles growth.
Note also that local culture has a big effect on this. Exactly how much you can tax the rich|poor|middle-class depends on how the people in general feel about taxation (during WW2 we didn't have a problem with a 92% top tax rate - a generation later we did). Europeans seem to be willing to live with higher tax levels than we are over here, for instance. This is not to imply that we are better than they are, or worse than they are, just different. A couple of generations of the right sort of public education (which includes what people see on TV, not just what they study in school) could make us like them, them like us, or both of us farther to either extreme than we are now.
And looking at history, we see that in the period between the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Feudal period, the peasants' lives were, in fact...worse. Much worse. That was when barbarian (by Roman standards, anyway) armies were pillaging their way across the provinces of the Empire. Later on, those armies became the new overlords and protected (at least theoretically, and mostly practically) the peasants.
Please note that Feudalism was a reaction to the extreme poverty of the period and the weakness and poverty even of the kings - the whole feudal structure consisted of people who owed various obligations to their overlords in lieu of, well, taxes - "you bring 100 men to fight for me when I call, and I'll let you rule the land between this river and the next"....
Does that mean that 1% of the richest are not quite the same as 1% of the top tax payers? What happened to the progressive tax system?
It means exactly that. We tax based on INCOME, not WEALTH. If I have one TRILLION dollars in assets, but an income of only fifteen thousand a year, I pay no taxes. And that trillion is pretty much meaningless.
So Bill Gates doesn't pay taxes based on what his Microsoft stock is worth, but rather on what Microsoft pays him (plus what he gets for selling any stock over and above what Microsoft pays him). In his case, wealth and income are totally disjoint.
Once upon a time, the last time but a few (dozen) that we had a discussion that got around to taxes, I went to the IRS website to get their tax statistics. The "rich" (in terms of income, NOT wealth) pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes than the rest of us do. Not an astoundingly higher percentage, but higher. Which is as it should be - a flat tax is an inherently bad idea, just as an extremely progressive tax is a bad idea.
Which would put you in that "bottom 50% that owns 1% of the world's wealth, correct?
So, do you go hungry often? Have you had to sell any of your children to buy food for the others? Sleep under the stars because you have no home? Wear rags until they rot off your body?
Somehow, I think not. You've got the laptop, the cellphone, cable TV, VCR/DVR, probably several TV's, the car (or more than one), the lawnmower, edger, weedwhacker, beds, comfortable furniture, plenty of clothes, plenty of food at home (unless tomorrow is grocery day, then maybe not), money to go see a movie when you want to, to eat in a nice restaurant from time to time, etc.
In other words, wealth, as defined in this study, is a pretty meaningless way to decide how well off you are.
Before World War One, it was believed that a large European war was basically impossible, because it would destroy the economies of the countries involved.
Sounds like you effectively have what we refer to as "vouchers" - the tax money follows the kid, not the school, and the school can be whatever the parent(s) want it to be, so long as it meets educational minimum requirements.
Interestingly, a few days after the lawsuit that started was dismissed by the Judge, the Supremes came down with a decision that said that even consensual affairs between employer and employee had some element of coercion, and therefore were liable to be considered harassment if either party was of a mind to do so. This in response to a sexual completely unrelated harassment suit as a result of a consensual affair that apparently went south.
Yes. Or cover it with a couple yards of lunar dirt.
I fail to see how relativity limits us to 0.001c. The relativistic effects of such a speed differ from classical mechanics by only 0.00005 percent. So a trip of 5.4 light hours at 0.001c would take 5400 hours, but would appear to the passengers to take nearly TEN SECONDS less time 5399 hours, 59 minutes, 50.2 seconds
To reach .001c with 50g's would take .003e8 m/s / (5 * 9.8m/s^2) ) ~= 8 hours (neglecting relativistic effects, real time would be longer... lets say we can increase the force arbitrarily to compensate for relativity, again more new physics needed). So we need 16 hours to reach that speed, and another 16 hours to decelerate at the other side, means 16 hours accelerating and decelerating, and I'm neglecting more relativity here, but again on the aggressive side.
Actually, the number you are looking for is 1.7 hours, not eight hours (or 16). And it is nearly irrelevant. If you are travelling 5.4 light hours at 0.001c, it would take you 5400 hours. If you accelerate at 5g to get to 0.001c, we can increase travel time to 5401.7 hours. At 1g, the actual travel time would be about 5408.5 hours. Trust me, after better than seven months in space, the extra 6.8 hours would be meaningless. Even at 0.1g, travel time would only increase by about three and a half days (85 extra hours), again trivial compared to seven months in space.
My next point is often neglected. What happens if you hit a little meteorite (It could be the size of a pebble, or even just a little cloud of dust). If that smacks into you at .001c relative velocity, you can bet it's going to do a lot of damage, even without considering relativistic mass. Think about how much damage small meteors do impacting earth at terminal velocity, which is probably at .00001 c or something... So we need shielding technology. Think about how much trouble the shuttle has with it's shielding tiles.
No, it's not.
0.001c is about 300km/s. It's fast. Really fast. a 1 gram rock at that speed would have almost the kinetic energy of a tank's APFSDSDU round. Well, okay, about 1/6th that energy. Non-trivial, but it's not a "blow the spacecraft up" sort of event.
Again, relativity is not important at such low speeds as 0.001c.
Oh, and the shuttle's shielding tiles are about reentry heat, not about protecting it from meteors or other weaponry - the tiles are about as tough as so much glass.
And 0.00001c for meteors? I'm afraid you're off by a factor of ten there - try 0.0001c. The Shuttle reenters at almost three times the speed you ascribe to meteors, and it's going about as slowly as it's possible to go at reentry.
The upshot is we are a LONG LONG way away from travelling to pluto or even mars in short times. More importantly there are many other technological hurdles that have to be overcome before we get to that point. The space program has been responsible for a lot of useful technology that has made it into the civilian world (tempura and velco spring immediately to mind, but I know there are many more).
Actually, the slowest POSSIBLE free orbit to Mars is quicker than your hypothetical trip to Pluto at 0.001c - it's a big solar system, but Mars isn't really all that far away.
By the by, Velcro came along before the space program. And tempura???? What does the space program have to do with Japanese fried foods? I can't even begin to guess what you thought you were talking about with that one.
Umm, you do realize that 600,000 dead out of 26,000,000 implies that the 1849 people sampled turned up about 43 death certificates, right? Assuming that they did, in fact, use Death Certificates as the indicator.
Far be it from me to think that 42 death certificates are not a solid statistical sample, of course.
Actually, historically, we're reported both casualties and deaths, but concentrated on deaths. During WW2, it was routine to list local soldiers who'd lost lives in the newspapers. Routine wounds were seldom reported, though they would be, when available, for major battles. Note that they were seldom available for months afterwards.
Note, further, that in 10 years of Vietnam, we had 58,184 killed. In Korea, three years, 36,913. In WW2, during the three years and change, we had 405,399 killed. WW1, two years and change, 116,516. Civil War, four years and change, 364,511 (not counting Southerners).
It is certainly arguable whether Iraq is comparable to the Civil War, WW1, or WW2. Hard to argue it's not commparable to Korea, which is of similar size, and had an inferior military in every way (smaller, using weapons obsolete even then, poorly equipped even in the obsolete equipment it had).
So, yes, we have suffered a comparatively paltry number of casualties. Does this justify the casualties we HAVE suffered? No. Whatever justification for casualties are possible in ANY war are best framed in terms of "What did we gain at the price of those deaths?" Note that I think that the Civil War, WW1, and WW2 were worth the price we paid. Vietnam was not worth the price, probably (its results were arguable, at best). Korea was only worthwhile because it established the notion that the UN was NOT the League of Nations. Which probably bought us two generations without a major war.
You haven't read much Egyptian history, I see.
Some Pyramids were cannibalized to finish up others, when they were needed suddenly (by an untimely death). Some Pharoahs (Tutankhamon, for instance) were buried in whatever tomb happened to be ready when he died.
The Egyptian Pharoahs were Gods, alright. But mostly the dead ones were treated as dead, and the live ones got to decide what was important - and with few exceptions, they didn't think their own tombs were nearly so important as the stuff they were using while they were still alive. Much less the tombs of that last guy, whatsisname....
They showed some code in Dynix, correct? Which they don't own, correct?
* Maybe fourth, if you're going by the % of seats available
I'll go with third.
and two of those are unarguably historic events (the midterm surrounding Watergate and the Republican Revolution of 1994)
Can't argue with that. The million dollar question is whether this one was a "historic event", or just a large swing back to "normal" - the Democrats controlled the House for so long before 1994 that many people regard that as the normal state of affairs (including me - until 1994, the Dems had controlled the House for my entire life).
Looking at the historic data, you see much bigger shifts in the elections before 1974 than in the elections after. Average before: 30. Average after: 18. Which indicates that the incumbency effect has been getting stronger lately. Throw in gerrymandering, and it's obvious that this election was well outside the norm.
Don't treat gerrymandering as a new phenomenon. It's been around since the beginning of the United States. So, that particular factor should be ignored. Remember that while the gerrymandering by Republicans has made the news a lot in the last decade, it has been used by the Democrats in places that they controlled as well. And was practiced by both Parties before the subject of Republican gerrymandering became an issue.
The Incumbent Effect is certainly real - most seats that change hands are open these days. Largely the effect of the unintended consequences of Campaign Reform laws since Watergate.
Yah, we need some campaign reform. However, what we've gotten in the way of Campaign Reform has been a dismal failure at its stated intent (though no doubt a success at its unstated intent - to make sure the lawmakers who passed it succeeded at reelection).
No, Term Limits aren't the answer - we don't need to transfer more power to the Civil Service or the Lobbyists - both have too much already.
Personally, I'd prefer that the States and Feds get out of the business of supporting political parties. No more Party primaries run by the State - let the Parties manage (and pay for) their own Primaries if they want them. No Party affiliation listed on ballots, even. The States should neither know nor care what Party a candidate is a member of, nor should some Parties have privileged positions relative to other Parties.
Hell, even the Greens might have a chance that way, if the Republicans and Democrats end up running more than one candidate each because the egos of the candidates can't step aside and make room for the bigger egos of the other candidates from their own Parties.
Hmm, didn't that happen as recently as 1994?
I've never bothered to do much research on the average loss of seats by the Party in power during a midterm election, but it's pretty much normal for the ruling Party to lose some seats at every midterm election. The Dems picked up 32 seats, I think. Which puts them on the high side of average for a midterm election, but not incredibly so - average is somewhere in the mid-20's, I think.
Plenty of evidence the change is because of disgust with the Republicans, very little that civil rights had much to do with it.
That's the best example I can think of where we were both outnumbered and out-technologied. Note that even with the Third Army relief forces included in the American count, the Americans were outnumbered by more than two to one. The Americans did not field a tank as good as the Panther until the Korean War, as I recall, though arguably the Pershing (1945) was almost good enough.
20. Patents are 20 years long.
Down here, you're only registered with a political party if you want to be, and such registration only allows you to vote in the Party Primaries. It has ZERO impact on how you vote in the general election (the Old South is full of registered Democrats who vote Republican).